Newly reunited best friends, Mae Rainey, 11, and Mai Frandsen,11, pass the time in the hospital drawing and playing games while Mei receives a blood transfusion in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, February 23, 2015.

Newly reunited best friends, Mae Rainey, 11, and Mai Frandsen,11, pass the time in the hospital drawing and playing games while Mei receives a blood transfusion in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, February 23, 2015.

Mae Rainey (left) and Mai Frandsen play a game together at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland.

Mae Rainey (left) and Mai Frandsen play a game together at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland.

Photo: Amy Osborne / The Chronicle

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Best friends forever: Separated in China, 2 girls reunite in U.S.

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Mae and Mai spent the first years of their lives in the same orphanage in southern China, before they were adopted by families on opposite coasts of the United States.

They were inseparable in China. As close as sisters. They ate together and played together, and even after they were moved to separate foster families in the same town, they went to school together and often shared meals at one girl’s home.

Adoption may have saved their lives, but they both lost someone they loved.

This week, four years after the best friends were split up, the girls reunited in Oakland, where they’re receiving treatment for the same genetic blood disease at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland.

Their first meeting on Sunday was “awkward” and “weird,” the girls said. But by Monday morning — as they kept each other company while Mai got a blood transfusion — they were laughing and talking like the oldest of friends.

“At first you don’t know what to say. This is a stranger to you,” said Mae Rainey, 10. Now, though, she says Mai will be her friend forever.

The girls were close in part because of their shared health problems. In China, they frequently went to the hospital together, where the orphans would lie two to a bed for blood transfusions.

Mae and Mai have thalassemia, a blood disorder that disrupts the body’s ability to make the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in red blood cells. Children with thalassemia can become severely anemic and require regular blood transfusions.

“If they don’t get transfusions, children will die in the first few years of life,” said Dr. Ash Lal, director of the thalassemia clinical program at the Oakland hospital.

Needing special care

Blood donation is low in China and many children, especially orphans, don’t get the frequent transfusions they need to thrive, Lal said. That can lead to physical delays and organ damage, and adopted children may need special care when they arrive in the United States.

Three years ago, the Oakland hospital, which has one of the largest thalassemia treatment centers in the United States, created a summer clinic specifically for families with children adopted from China.

But that’s not how Mae and Mai found each other.

Mae was adopted in November 2011. When she came to the United States, to her parents’ home in Charlotte, N.C., she talked often of her time in the orphanage and in foster care. And she was always mentioning her friend “Sing-Sing.”

“For 3½ years, she would say to us, 'Do you think we’ll ever find Sing-Sing?’” said Bryan Rainey, Mae’s father.

Rainey and his wife, Robin, had no way of knowing who Sing-Sing was or if that was even her real name. Mae was not their daughter’s name in China, just a name they liked and gave her after the adoption.

Mai, meanwhile, was adopted in May 2013, and came home to the Frandsen family in Madera. The shared name is a coincidence — Heather Frandsen wanted to name her daughter after her own grandmother.

After a year or two, the Raineys learned that their daughter was not responding to certain drugs to treat the thalassemia. Patients tend to get dangerous buildups of iron from frequent blood transfusions, and most of them take drugs to reduce the iron levels. The drugs weren’t working for Mae, and doctors said she would need a bone marrow transplant to cure the thalassemia.

Looking for a donor

But it’s tough to find bone marrow donors, especially for ethnic minorities. So the Raineys, working with an organization called Be the Match that helps put together registry drives to find potential donors, began broadcasting their story.

Somebody posted a link to a television report about them on Facebook, where it caught the attention of a support group for parents with adopted children with thalassemia. One group member noticed that Mae was from the same region of China as Mai and mentioned the coincidence to Frandsen.

The girls met online in November, talking over a video link, but that was awkward and they both were shy and quiet. So the parents made plans to meet up at the Oakland hospital, where Mai went regularly for treatment and the Raineys could take Mae for a specialty consultation.

They met in person in a hotel lobby on Sunday, both girls still terribly shy, their parents said. The families went to Oakland Chinatown to explore and shop. And suddenly, Bryan Rainey looked up and they were holding hands. By dinner, they were inseparable once again.

“They were both really nervous,” Frandsen said. “I don’t know if my Mai really believed it was going to happen. But when we got back to the room that night, after they met, her whole demeanor changed.

“I think when Mae left the orphanage, that was really traumatic for my Mai,” Frandsen said. “I think Mae was her person. You know, that one person who means everything.”

Close friends again

They seem to have fallen into old patterns now, the parents say. Mae is clearly protective. On Monday, she helped Mai roll her IV pole around the hospital clinic floor. And when the girls climbed onto a bed for lunch and a movie, Mae got them settled, pulling the video screen around and making sure they were comfortable against the same pillow.

Mai, meanwhile, is a tough and outspoken girl, her mom said. But she didn’t seem to mind being doted on by Mae.

The strange coincidence of their reunion isn’t lost on the girls. Both said even after seeing one another’s photo, they couldn’t believe they would ever meet again. Now, though, they know they’ll never be apart for long.